Smart storytelling and snappy editing elevate the jokes and enrich the emotions.

The attention to detail is fine-grained, especially on the slippery slope of plea bargaining. Missing are two pieces that might have turned this into an urban classic.

Transplanted Australian director Schepisi confidently threads his own route through Peckinpah territory (a Mexican patriarch demanding honour; a graveyard resurrection), less concerned with Peckinpah's gothic haunting than with teasing dark, absurd ironies from the symbiosis of sworn enemies.

With elegant fin de siècle sets superbly shot by Harry Stradling, and the ironic Wildean wit understated rather than overplayed, it's that rare thing: a Hollywoodian literary adaptation that both stays faithful and does justice to its source.

These two trash-talkin’ Picassos may or may not end up getting their due, but Leon and his two extraordinary actors (especially Washington) have already put us squarely on the side of the beautiful losers regardless.

Given the dreck we’ve seen this summer, it’s nice to be reminded of the virtues of clean storytelling and cultural curiosity.

Suddenly, everything clicks; this snooty art merchant may love the sound of his own voice, but you're reminded how much Rohmer valued the sound of others' voices above all, and why going out on a whimper occasionally works wonders.

The ingenious narrative, told from differing perspectives and incorporating tales within tales and teasing elisions between film and reality, is actually informative about the nuts and bolts of shooting a movie, and not only as a catalogue of technical disasters - through the shamefully under-rated Keener, we get a real insight into screen acting and the way fatigue, memory, stress and surroundings can take their toll. Hers, however, is merely the finest of a whole host of spot-on performances. A treat.

Skyfall has the feel of both a ceremonial commemoration and a franchise-rebooting celebration, especially in the ways it attempts to too cutely sync up the '60s-era Bond mythos (casual misogyny and all) with the more complicatedly "Bourne"-inflected recent episodes.

Lyrical touches and the most moving use ever of Katy Perry's "Firework" almost cancel out a cheap-shot third-act tragedy, yet it's the actors that save the film from soaping itself into Euro-miserablist irrelevance.

Leigh, in her first film since Gone With the Wind, is fresh, needy, poignant, while Taylor's unexpectedly assured restraint allows her to carry the film's surge of emotion.

Indeed, the doc works best as a relationship study, filled with endearing moments of intimate bickering. Takei is a self-admitted ham but a playful one, projecting his confidence in increasingly meaningful directions.

A characteristically elegant, eloquent and idiosyncratic meditation on the relationships between personal and political histories, and between life and art.

Their relationship is both a genuinely touching love story and a clever gloss on the barriers and extensions of language. It also contains a truly didactic other-dimension which points out some very salutary things about our often unintentional slights towards the deaf, without being either a simple sob or an issue story.

Roger Corman's production, following up on his own Bloody Mama, is something of a delight. Although covering the familiar ground of bank robbing during the Depression, the film persistently and boisterously treads its own path.

Lewin brings off the near-impossible task of positing a transcendent love in a sceptical age, succeeding through his own conviction, and indeed because Gardner, in the role of a lifetime, seems as much screen goddess as mere mortal – an apotheosis rendered by cameraman Jack Cardiff in Technicolor so heady it’s the stuff of legend.

Kurosawa plays most of it for laughs by expertly parodying the conventions of Japanese period action movies, but the tone switches to a magnificent vehemence in the heart-stopping finale.

Simply a rivetingly murderous game of cat and mouse that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Both a slow-burn suspense drama and an intriguing enigma, his film is beautifully executed throughout: the three lead performances are all spot on, while Mowg’s jazzy score and Hong Kyung-pyo’s immaculate camerawork fit the shifting moods to perfection.

The story isn’t wildly original – think ‘Leon’ with throwing stars – and it’s overlong, but the action is unrelenting, thrillingly staged and occasionally even flat-out hilarious.

Even though it doesn’t stick the landing, Shang-Chi is one of the better Marvel intros. Thor and Captain America both debuted in films less assured than this, and look how they developed. Shang-Chi would be a welcome addition to any future Marvel movie.

The idea that we would want even a few of these draggy, didactic scenes (the poorly paced French plantation sequence plays better with self-satisfied critics than with audiences) may remind you of one of Marlon Brando’s immortal lines, the one about an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.

Colaizzo successfully walks a fine line between inspiration and caution, never presenting Brittany as a patronizing role model for weight loss, nor a clichéd case of inner beauty. The film grasps the complex nature of Brittany’s self-image without ignoring its dark side.

Come Back, Africa is a work of amazing grace - and a forgotten treasure.

West is far more adept at and interested in sustaining an unrelentingly ominous mood than in executing the genre-required spook shocks.

Though its come-on is playful, this documentary sinks into some swampy subjects, including racism, secret biowarfare and political assassination.

Another Earth is a movie you take home and write your own ending to.

What might have been a long walk off a short pier becomes a valid, vital rethinking of a crime classic.